Hi everyone, This week I read “The Lover” written by Duras. I quite enjoyed this book and it’s almost unique take on this sort of narrative. This book explores themes of relationships, power dynamics, wealth, love, and poverty. Within the relationship dynamic between the young girl and an older man it is unclear who is […]
Norman Manea, The Trenchcoat
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Hey everyone! I’m super excited to talk about this week’s reading “Deep Rivers” by Jose Maria Arguedas. The novel dives into the Peruvian Andean culture and surrounds the story of Ernesto, who is a young boy torn between two worlds. Ernesto’s upbringing is a blend of his indigenous Quechua traditions and Western education as he […]
I can’t quite believe that just last week we were talking about incest and now we are making a sharp turn towards racism and colonialism. Black Shack Alley is one of the stand out novels that I have enjoyed so far in this class. This reading feels a lot more reminiscent of common literary novels […]
Bombal’s “The Shrouded Woman” presents a complex perspective on love. Written from the perspective of a deceased woman, Ana María takes on a variety of roles to unfold her memories and complicated relationships around her. Being a wife whose marriage is disastrous and lifeless, a mother whose children all encounter troubles of their own, and […]
As the last reading for this course, I made sure to take notes and reflect on the text as heavily as possible. I wanted to bring something more significant from it than a blog post, and I feel I did. In this novella written by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, we meet our protagonist, Daniel Benchimol, who […]
José Eduardo Agualusa’s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers shows a distinct flavour compared to the other novels I read throughout this term because it is the only piece of writing that sets its stage in Africa. In particular, this book is associated with an evident connection with the history, society, and politics of Angola, as […]
Using the Spanish Civil War as a narrative foundation, Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis illustrates the complexities of humanity vividly and touchingly. The novel takes a rather unusual narrative methodology through the point of view of a fictional author and journalist who also happens to be named Javier Cercas. He became interested in investigating a legendary story […]
Having studied pretty much nothing about Romania up until now, I appreciated the glimpse into history that “The Trenchcoat” provides. At the same time, the censor-conscious writing and the inability of the characters themselves to acknowledge exactly what is happening to them made this period seem even more mysterious to me. Nearly every paragraph of […]
